Performance baseline – test with SQLIO

I installed SQLIO in default directory on my Windows Server system. Open command prompt as Administrator in SQLIO folder and execute command sqlio –help to see various options you can specify during test.

I started with changing file param.txt by setting testfile.dat size from 8MB to 39,8GB.

Shell

1

E:\testfile.dat20x040800

Next step is to simply create batch file with various parameters to find sweet spot between IOPS and MB/s.

Random read SQLIO test results

As we clearly see best performance is achieved by using IO size 128 KB, with 128 pending IO. We achieved 695.99 MB per second with average latency 45 ms and 5567.95 IOPS.

Performance test with SQLIO accelerated with vFlash Read Cache

I ran the same tests to check what kind of performance boost I will get.

Sequential read SQLIO test results accelerated

Results from Excel.

Chart from data.

ESXi performance chart shows quite strange results.

I checked as well vFlash Cache statistics.

As we clearly see best performance is achieved by using IO size 128 KB, with 128 pending IO. We achieved 828.02 MB per second with average latency 38 ms and 6624.17 IOPS.

Random read SQLIO test results accelerated

Results from Excel.

Chart from data.

ESXi performance chart shows quite strange results.

I checked as well vFlash Cache statistics.

As we clearly see best performance is achieved by using IO size 128 KB, with 8 pending IO. We achieved 821.62 MB per second with average latency 1 ms and 6572.98 IOPS.

Performance results – cached vs no cached

For better view on charts I decided to split results.

Average latency results – sequential read test

Average megabytes per second results – random read test

Average IOPS results – sequential read test

Average latency results – random read test

Average megabytes per second results – random read test

Average IOPS results – random read test

Performance results conclusions

After really long test I can clearly say that I am happy with achieved results. As you see I have quite fast underlying Fibre Channel storage. In my case you see improvement with cached solution pretty much from the beginning of tests in all areas. If your storage is quite slow you will see much better performance increase than me. I hope this post was informative for you and you will test vFlash Read Cache as well with same good results as me.

I am innovative and experienced IT professional with over 12 years in the IT industry.

My experience and skills have been proven by leading vendor certifications like AWS, Alibaba Cloud, VMware, and Microsoft. I contribute to IT community and I received VMware vExpert 2014 - 2017 and VMware vExpert NSX 2017 Award.